Conventional reaction vessels for manufacturing fluorocarbons are fabricated from one or more of Hastelloy, carbon steel, stainless steel or polychlorotrifluoroethylene resins. Commercial manufacture of a fluorocarbons creates an extremely corrosive environment. While the corrosion resistance of Hastelloy alloys containing nickel, cobalt, chromium, molybdenum, etc., is superior to stainless steel, it also corrodes at an undesirable rate, particularly when exposed to a high perfluorinated catalyst concentration. The polychlorotrifluoroethylene resins and similar highly fluorinated resins are not suitable because such resins have relatively poor heat transfer, low strength, and faulty adhesion to supporting base metal surfaces.
The conventional cost of materials for fabricating a reaction vessel on a commercial scale, from precious metals, i.e., noble metals such as ruthenium, osmium, rhodium, iridium, palladium, platinum, silver, and gold, is typically not cost-effective. High value metals such as rhenium, typically are also not cost-effective for use in fabricating a reaction vessel. Further, refractory metals, i.e., high melting point metals, such as hafnium, molybdenum, tungsten, ruthenium, osmium, iridium, and alloys thereof, are often brittle at room temperature which prevents these metals from being readily fabricated into a reaction vessel for manufacturing a fluorocarbon. While refractory metals have desirable properties such as corrosion resistance, high melting point, among others., these metals typically lack characteristics such as ductility which are required for materials used for fabricating a reaction vessel.
Explosion bonding is conventionally used for obtaining a reaction vessel. However, conventional explosion bonding techniques are limited to using those metals possessing room temperature ductility and impact strength. Metals lacking such ductility tend to crack during explosion bonding.
Conventional explosion bonding techniques also require multiple cladding shots in order to obtain (1) a clad or composite having more than one cladding plate on the same backer or base, and (2) a completely sealed and metallurgically bonded seam between adjacent clad plates on the same backer. Further, the dimensions of the resultant composite are typically limited to the dimensions of commercially available metal sheets.